In connection with cooking it often occurs that heated food has to be cooled down and placed in a refrigerator as soon as possible in order to avoid deterioration of cooked food.
This is usually carried out such, that the hot receptacle in which the food has been cooked, or a receptacle to which the cooked, hot food has been transferred, is placed in cold water to be cooled down to a temperature permitting the receptacle to be placed in a refrigerator without exposing the food kept in the refrigerator to warming or to be affected by condensed damp. During colder seasons the receptacle may, of course, as an alternative, be placed out-doors to be cooled down.
A number of inconveniences are obvious with a procedure like that. A receptacle with food in a water-bath may be forgotten and will quite soon assume room-temperature followed by the risk of growth of bacterial content in the food contained in the receptacle. Placing out-doors is an impractical emergency solution that may result in the receptacle being forgotten till next day with an increasing out-door temperature. Further, it may possibly occur that the food is cooked by an early eating family member and is left on the table to be consumed later by family members that are more delayed than planned, in which case the food possibly may have become uneatable.